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unts writes "The highly configurable Linux PVR, MythTV, has reached the 0.25 release, over 500 days after the previous full release. New features include VAAPI support, E-AC3, TrueHD, and DTS-HD audio, the ability to control other home entertainment devices via HDMI CEC and additions to the API to allow HTTP live streaming. The release notes for 0.25 don't reflect the release status at the time of writing, but should contain most of the relevant changes. MythTV can be used as a backend (recorder) and frontend (viewer), but can also feed other frontends such as appropriate versions of XBMC. Hopefully the new HTTP streaming API will lead to even more ways to get your video fix."

I actually LOVED MythTV...back when I was watching HD over the air, in combination with getting free analog cable tv from my cable internet connection....there were also some HD (local stuff) on that unfiltered cable feed.

However, I've moved about in recent years, and at the current new place, can't find the filter to remove for that cable internet connection. And now set up with UVerse, I wanted lots of HD content for new big plasma tv.

I wish there was a way to integrate MythTV with Uverse....but until I can find a way to do that, Myth is not something I mess with any longer.

I did prefer it...great for setting recording filters and keywords, etc. Much better than any DVR that comes with cable or uverse or satellite.

Over-the-air is the way to go (it's free). But some people live in poor areas and have to use satellite. Can the MythTV replace Dish's $7/month DVR (what an insane price; the whole thing only costs $150 if purchased outright).

Can't help ya with the first two, but here ya go [southparkstudios.com]. Kind of odd though. New episodes go up like a day after they air on Comedy Central, then after a couple of days, are pulled, before going back up weeks later. But as a bonus, it's uncensored.

One nice thing about MythTV is that I can do a SQL query to see what we've been watching. I can see what shows have been recorded and which ones have been watched. I can slice it and dice it by channel and series.

With the notable exception of Mythbusters, most of those channels mentioned by the OP seem pretty worthless really.

SciFi isn't what it once was. All of the proper sci-fi seems to be on other channels with very little left on SyFy itself.

Not sure about Discovery networks, but Food/Cooking/HGTV/DIY tend to have full episodes available to stream online these days.

I've got satellite right now too, but I'm hoping to drop it in favor of streaming. I also ran across a device -- I can't remember what it's called right now, but I think it starts with a "C" -- that's supposed to provide an easy-to-use TV interface for all those sorts of things (along with Hulu, Netflix, etc).

Not sure about Discovery networks, but Food/Cooking/HGTV/DIY tend to have full episodes available to stream online these days.

Well, do those stream at HD tv quality? 1080p? (I have a Samsung 59" Plasma, I want a quality signal)

If so, I guess I could look into it...but convenience...would have to rig up a comuter again, and put it in the living room hooked to the TV, and I never did figure out how to get that to work with a remote control, was a PITA to have to go over and mess with the keyboard, etc.

Use a couple of USB cables (up to about 16 feet) and a 7-button programmable mouse on the arm of your chair or couch. That will get you most common functions. If the distance is too far for USB, use a USB-over-Cat5 or USB-over-WiFi extender. If you need the keyboard often, plug a wireless keyboard/mouse receiver into the USB extension and keep the keyboard on the end table or coffee table.

I'm in the same boat, having Comcast with a number of HD channels that I like to record and watch. For some lucky few, such channels are available via firewire, unencrypted out of the cable box. I am not so lucky.

To remedy this, I have a Hauppuage HD-PVR. It is basically a $150 component + digital audio to h264 hardware encoder. Myth uses it combined with firewire channel changing (ir blasting works just fine though) to record all of my premium channels. The decrease in quality is barely perceptible even on

Actually, virtually all Comcast users should be included in that "lucky few". Nearly all your channels should be DRM-free, meaning MythTV can capture them directly, digitally, using a CableCard tuner. The only things that should need analog capture are channels such as HBO or Showtime.

When I moved to the new place..I did a lot of research and out of Cox cable, direct tv, dish tv and Uverse...Uverse won hands down on bang for the buck with most HD channels and DVR service to my rooms.

the hdhomerun prime likely won't work with Uverse, as that it isn't cable and doesn't use cablecard.

Too many in the FOSS community think the programmers are all you need to make decent software. So they take a "Who needs UI designers and technical writers?" approach that leaves the software produced sorely lacking in the kind of polish that people are willing to spend money for with commercial software.

The larger picture is, the programmers often ACTIVELY reject offers of critical help on interface design and usability, not to mention requests to streamline the installation of basic hardware such as remote controls. For instance, the Mythbuntu page for using ATi Remote Wonder remotes [mythtv.org], which were immensely popular and are still readily available in retail packaged alone or with ATi's capture boards including the All-In-Wonder HD line. Setup for these things is a nightmare - command line garbage, edit this or that file, go see "this other page" to find out how to get all the buttons working.

Would it REALLY be hard to set up a script that could enable the necessary settings? Of course not, they've done it for a number of the other remotes by outfites like Hauppauge. But because scripting that isn't "sexy" and some of the programmers are still acting all butthurt about ATi not having open drivers before AMD bought them out, none of the MythTV or Mythbuntu team want to get off their ass and integrate such a script into the main trunk even if someone from the outside submitted it.

It's shit like this that hinders F/OSS adoption by the larger population.

See, this is precisely the standard shitty linux user attitude that causes problems.

The ATi stuff I have, I've had for years. Under a Windows install, it worked great - STILL DOES in fact. F/OSS evangelists in my area are always trying to get me to "switch over" to a MythTV / Mythbuntu-based system, which I've tried a few times (no harm to slap in an alternate hard drive and test the build for the sake of testing).

You didn't even look at the wiki page I pointed to, to see all the different sets of instructi

Too many in the FOSS community think the programmers are all you need to make decent software. So they take a "Who needs UI designers and technical writers?" approach that leaves the software produced sorely lacking in the kind of polish that people are willing to spend money for with commercial software.

Exactly. Then again, given the derision towards companies that repackage technology (e.g., Apple) into more user-friendly form...

I mean, Apple's big points on marketing, but they score a pile on usability.

I don't know about cupholders, but I remember one of the trophy-wife types who was somehow working her way through an MBA (probably on her knees) when I was going through undergrad.

Come out to the parking lot, she's screaming at the BMW that had been her birthday gift from her sugar-daddy/husband a bit over a year ago, kicking the tire with her way-too-high heels, cussing up a storm because it makes a grinding noise and won't turn over to start. Tow truck shows up, guy asks her when her last oil change was.

And really scary version numbers.I see a 0.25 version number. I am like this isn't a full featured project. Then I have to step back and go. Well it is open source. They hate giving it a version 1.0 label until they get everything they wanted done.

I've been using it since 0.17 and it's been "fully functional" as far as I care since then.

I don't think it's ever going to penetrate the commercial space now ; digital TV has made it much easier to make products with PVR features and you can get devices that are basically an HDMI dongle with an SD card slot that perform the significant function (stream recording and playback), you have the likes of Ubuntu TV and the built in OS that most digital TVs seem to have these days.

I cut my teeth on Linux with MythTV though - at the time, I had to use Gentoo to get the bleeding edge kernel support for my DVB hardware. I learned a lot. I'd guess it's still a reasonable way to learn something about Linux, even if it's much easier than it used to be. Which is another way of saying it's a hobbyists project.

They finally have the structure in place for a decent UI (as of 0.24, actually). Unfortunately, there aren't any great designers working on themes. A lot of designers who make pretty pictures, but know nothing of how to make things for people who are using the TV from 10 feet away with a remote.

I think ______ is in dire need of a more polished and coherent UI. And a comprehensive user and installation guide.

New tech feats are ok, but they'll probably make the whole thing even less useable.

Insert your favorite FOSS equivalent of a commercial program in the blank, and you now know why it has a hard time taking off and beating the competition.

Usability is severely lacking in a lot of FOSS. Here's an example from my own personal experience. I wanted to outline some text in GIMP. this [gimpology.com] is what I had to go through. I'll just quote one of the comments from that post that gets the point across best:

Well, I've worked with countless FOSS programs and I have to say that MythTV gets the palm by about a couple of miles. All FOSS programs I could get something out of in a few minutes / hours of work. MythTV? Completely different league. You need DAYS to get anything working. And that's for a simplistic setup.

I've never seen that, and I've set up dozens of MythTV systems over the years for myself, family and friends, and used different hardware, althouth I usually try to stick to the "known to work" category

There are scripts to watch the backend and restart it when it died. Knoppmyth had a problem with that (not sure about all distros) about 5 years ago. You might be able to search their forums and use the same scripts.

I think there is one that works on Windows. For other platforms, the setup involves running Windows in VirtualBox or similar. Unfortunately this is a requirement because Netflix streaming uses Silverlight with some DRM that is not compatible with Moonlight, so is only available on Windows. Want to fix it? Write to the movie studios and tell them that this is why they're not getting any of your money.

I fixed it by just buying a WDTV Live Plus last year and between Netflix and pirated content from Usenet I get everything I need. No need for tuners or cable boxes or complicated setups. Just a Linux backend running Sickbeard + Couch Potato for the Usenet-sourced content and the WDTV Live Plus plays it all and streams Netflix.

Dear TheRaven64,We here at the movie studios are writing you back to let you know that we don't agree with your open source stance, and that is why don't get the privilege of viewing our totally awesome content. You can keep your money, and we'll use your illegal downloading of our content to show how we've lost 10 billion trillion million dollars, and use that as a case to filter the internets, get the courts to allow us to rifle through any/all social networks whenever we want, place surveillance cameras

A perfectly good netflix client for linux definitely does exist, because netflix comes standard on android-based googleTV devices. However, netflix is not willing to let the world have the sources, or even unrestricted access to the executables.

The only reason I can think of for this is that the netflix service must have some titanic security flaw that is so deeply embedded in their architecture that it would take absurd amounts of money to fix. You don't give up an income stream for no reason - maybe th

Projected support costs of Linux version vs. Projected revenue from it would be my guess. It's oft-repeated unfortunately.

Yes, it is a frequently cited reason, but not necessary the true one. Netflix used to work on Linux (until they switched to Silverlight). The last explanation from a Netflix executives of why they still have not restored Linux support was a long string of technical gibberish which basically boiled down to "because it isn't Windows". It was clear that he had no idea what it would take to get Linux support back.

It is not just Netflix that does this. Estimates of how hard it would be to support Linux often ass

This is why it's a good idea for people to write GNU/Linux when they mean "That open source operating system Ubuntu is based upon", even if some people seem to feel like they have to refuse doing so because RMS wants them to, and RMS is a dirty hippy or something. (WTF?)

Basically, it doesn't matter that there's an Android version. The APIs for Android and GNU/Linux are so completely unalike it's probably easier to port the Mac OS X version (if there is one, although I think it's all Silverlight based any

I watch Netflix, Hulu, etc. on all my Linux devices which means several Ubuntu, including an Asus netbook that I adore, along with my Nokia N900. I won't publish all my tricks regarding the N900 aside from explaining the main one, which is I use PlayonTV UPnP media server, running in a windows virtual machine, which is what the linux UPnP clients access. www.playon.tv Playon keeps adding new channels all the time too, I am happy with my on-demand content setup and costs.

So you sned your cable company $80/month because the $8/month cost of Netflix streaming is just outrageous? One cannont argue against logic like that. I find that Netflix (with some DVDs) is all the TV I need, no need for the cable at all, but to each his own.

Unfortunately that's one issue outside the scope of the mythtv project.

The HDHomeRun Prime technically does support CableCARD usage with Linux - but only for stations marked as "copy freely." If your cable provider decides to place any more restrictive copy flags on it (now or later), then your out of luck.

To make things even more annoying, even if you have an Xbox360 to use as a supplement for those premium channels, it can't tune the encrypted stations live without a Win7 box to serve as a pass-through.

Cable companies want above else for you to use their hardware and their services (DVR, cable box, etc) and are still fighting tooth and nail to cripple competing services on every front.

I wish they would integrate mythnettv into the mainline. Its an addon that shoves video podcasts into your "recorded tv shows" list as if they came over the air (or cable or satellite or whatever). Most of what I watch on "TV" is from revision3 or twit.tv or ted talks rss feed now rather than the old fashioned "tv" networks and it all comes from mythnettv run by a cron job every night pulling a bunch of RSS feeds.

Another thing thats bugged me for years with my myth setup at home is they've got all this psuedo-intelligent magic AI post-processing after recording that makes commercials disappear... literally hands free you're watching TV, a break comes up, it skips the commercials. Very nice, very impressive, something no other DVR has, a killer feature that makes it impossible to even consider trying another. However, for years and years they still can't figure out a way to auto-zoom widescreen content on a narrow channel shown on a wide display (in other words, a tiny pic in the center of a giant black border). You'd think tech smart enough to detect and autoskip commercials could figure out when a TV show gets "framed" and adjust the zoom appropriately. Maybe this is something they added back in 0.23 and I just haven't noticed yet, donno.

Another thing that bugs me is digital dropouts make a star trek like sound in addition to ugly picture and I wish the backend could be convinced if the mpeg stream turns to crap that it should cleanly eat the bad checksum frames and mute the sound stream. Doesn't happen often. But the concept of a squelch function when the input drops doesn't seem like rocket science to implement. Even a cheap TV can bluescreen on lack of input signal, why not my myth backend?

If you sign up for schedule data from schedules direct, how come myth can't tell you when it expires other than your listings disappearing?

Back around 0.20 there was a really nice streaming audio player and I found it amusing to listen to various world wide stations on my TV. That disappeared in recent versions, a rare feature regression. I miss that.

Honestly 0.24 is/was about 99% perfect, its just these weird corner cases that still bug me after years and years, and it sounds like 0.25 has fixed none of my real issues while adding support for stuff I simply don't care about.

I am pleased that its 1998 in mythtv land so they finally support ipv6... I'm thinking of setting up a frontend at my mother in law's place and this saves me the effort of putting a vpn client to make her house part of my network. Then she'd have my full library of media and a decent DVR. From multi-room DVR to multi-house DVR, here I come!

For real? I'm not talking about bringing up the OSD menu, then selecting video then selecting... zoom or whatever (from memory) then selecting full instead of none, but I'm requesting a magic auto-zoomer where if it sees a black donut with a pic in the middle then it eats the donut and autozooms.

I'm not too worked up, this is only an issue if my atsc tuners are all busy and I'm stuck watching a widescreen show on a SD analog tuner (standard analog cable input). So it doesn't happen often, but it does hap

It's not automatic, but at least on my version of MythTV the 'W' key cycles through all the zoom settings during playback, so you don't have to pull up a menu. I use it all the time on my analog cable channels.

I also usually set 4:3 broadcasts to "half zoom" so that it fills up more of the TV screen at the expense of chopping a tiny bit off the top and bottom. So now I when I start watching a program, I instinctively hit W once for normal shows, and twice for letterboxed shows.

Hmm OK I guess I was hoping for that to show up in the channel guide. Where an end user could see it rather than a more esoteric location. I'm not asking for the blink tag, but a little something in the corner. Maybe it does that, I'll find out in a couple months.

Oh and I was just about to state that I LOVE schedules direct. I don't love paying for it, but talk about a service provider that just freaking works. You give them money and they do what they say they will all silent like, perfectly, every ti

FYI SchedulesDirect is a volunteer not for profit retransmission of the Zap2it schedules feed. Z2I used to provide this feature as an experimental courtesy. But then they got tired of the support and expense and ended it. This threatened MythTV's relevance as one of the big maintenance headaches was updating the screen scraper scheduling software when schedule websites changed their format. They were generally against TOS of those sites as well. It is then that SD was organized by several people in the Myth

Z2I used to provide this feature as an experimental courtesy. But then they got tired of the support and expense and ended it.

Close but not quite. Zap2It Labs was restricted to non-commercial use. Commercial applications were required to license the content independently for their users. A certain British guide data application saw its North American customer base drop below the point at which their per-user licensing costs allowed them to remain profitable. Rather than subsidize, refund, or outright abandon those customers, they instead cancelled their contract with the parent Tribune Media Services, and gave directions for t

Ah, thanks. Do I read that page right such that it's a 'folder' as in one of the shared resources I add to XBMC (e.g./net/fileserver/movies) but not on arbitrary paths (e.g./net/fileserver/movies/rated-r)?

I guess I could re-organize the movie paths on the MythTV side and change the NFS exports struture... sure would be great if it could understand ratings and categories, though!

I played with MythTV for a long time, and got it working pretty well. Then I got a Windows7 machine for other reasons, and Windows Media Center just works, right out of the box. I highly recommend it (and wish MS did too - I worry it'll stop being supported before long).

I've been using [boonstra.org] MythTV for a couple of years on Mac Mini (running [mythtv.org] OSX rather than Linux), talking to an HDHomeRun [silicondust.com] network tuner connected to a broadcast antenna in my attic. The team has really improved the OSX port in the last few years, with the only lack of Linux parity being in the realm of hardware-accelerated playback.

After dealing with the confusing setup screens and active channel scans, it has worked brilliantly, especially since the 0.24 release. The scheduling software is really good, especially using the web frontend. Watching TV on any computer in the house has been very convenient, and the automatic commercial skipping is pleasant.

Between broadcast and online sources, I get most of what I want to watch, the exceptions being Game of Thrones and some cable-only basketball and hockey broadcasts. The complete, uncompressed HD signals over broadcast TV are perceptibly clearer than HD cable (or, worse, HD satellite) signals, which suffer from the compression.

It is the most pristine form of a particular broadcast channel available.

Cable companies will typically take that signal and mess around with it to enable better compression within their own transmission medium. There are even websites that track the level of compression that cable operators use for a particular channel.

Cable is like taking a DVD, ripping it, and then running it through mencoder.

Right idea, wrong numbers. 6MHz channels running QAM-256 modulation are good for ~38.4Mbps, nearly double that of ATSC's 8VSB modulation. Also, I'm not aware of any cable companies switching over to H.264 (MPEG4 AVC). There's really just too large an installed user base.

Legit question, for several reasons, and I'm a huge MythTV fan, have been for 8+ years, but I still use it. Here's why, and why not:

1.I no longer frequently use the video and music plugins, since so much content is streaming over the Internet or other devices. I have some old DVD/BluRay rips still on it that I sometimes watch.
2. I no longer use it to watch any DVD's, for the same reason above, AND the DVD player in it sucks at playing 50% of the DVDs I have, and it doesn't play BluRays.
3. I still use it constantly for the TV recording features. It's still the best DVR by far than any thing else out there, F/OSS, or commercial. Yes, I understand, lots of you college kids and hippy-types watch everything on Hulu or wherever else on your laptops in the coffee-shops, but I like recording shows, watching them later THAT SAME NIGHT or the next night, AUTO-SKIP commercials, on a big 65" TV in HD. All my HD content is from an antenna - I only watch network shows, no cable, don't need it. So it works perfect for that.

LOL the only BR I play come from Us**et and torrents as video files not old fashioned optical disks, but a glance at the readme for 0.25 shows that adding native blueray support was a major focus of 0.25.

If they're into adding legacy physical media, I'd like an 8-track interface for mythmusic while they're at it. Maybe sony mini-disc player support?

so much content is streaming over the Internet

One of the pains of being an early adopter is you get your attitudes set in stone from ye olden days. For me, streaming will always be shitty breaking up and s

Native BluRay support would be nice, but considering they can't even get DVD playback to work reliably, I'm not counting on it.

Streaming from legit services (hulu, netflix, even YouTube if the SOURCE is good) is fine for me and all my devices. But, it either costs, has ads, or the content isn't current (e.g. Last season is available,but not this season,etc)

This is exactly how I use it - recorded OTA television (no cable) and video files with MythTV, and then Netflix in Virtualbox, and Amarok for music. This results in more TV than I have time to watch anyway.